the mouth opened in a yawn. It was like the yawning of a lizard; the jaws, sharp, soundless, merciless. It was as though all thought was over, and out of some reptilian existence the yawn grew and opened like a reflex. And it was so, for Steerpike, leaning there, had, instead of pitying himself and brooding upon his mistakes, been tabulating and re-grouping in his scheduled brain every aspect of his position, of his plans, of his relationship not only with Fuchsia but with all with whom he had dealings, and making out of the maze, of these relationships and projects a working pattern – something that was a masterpiece of cold-blooded systemization. But the plan of action, condensed and crystallized though it was, was nevertheless, for all its ingenuity, somehow less microscopically careful in its every particular than usual. He was prepared for the first time to take risks. The time had come for drawing together the hundred and one threads that had for so long been stretched from one end of the castle to another. This would need action. For the moment he could relax. This dawn would be his own. Tonight he must bewilder Fuchsia; dazzle her, awake her; and if all failed, seduce her so that, compromised in the highest degree, he would have her at his mercy. In her present mood she was too dangerous.
But today? He yawned again. His brainwork was done. His plans were complete. And yet there was one loose end. Not in the logic of his brain, but in spite of it – a loose end that he wished to tuck away. What his brain had proved his eyes were witless of. It was his eyes that needed confirmation.
He ran his tongue between his thin, dry lips. Then he turned his face to the east. It shone in the yellow light. It shone like a carbuncle, as, breaking suddenly out of the darkness, the first direct ray of the climbing sun broke upon his bulging brow. His dark red eyes stared back into the heart of the level ray. He cursed the sun and slid out of the beam.
FIFTY-EIGHT
It was lucky for Titus that when the Doctor started from his sleep he immediately recognized the boy’s shape against the windowpane.
Titus had climbed the thick creeper below the Doctor’s window and had with difficulty forced up the lower sash. There had been no other way to enter. To knock or ring would have been to have lost Steerpike.
Dr Prunesquallor reached for the candle by his bed but Titus bent forward in the darkness.
‘No, Dr Prune, don’t light it … it’s Titus … and we want your help … terribly … sorry it’s so early … can you come? … Flay is with me …’
‘Flay?’
‘Yes, he has come from exile – but out of concern for Fuchsia, and me, and the laws … but quickly, Doctor, are you coming? We are trailing Steerpike – he’s just outside.’
In a moment the Doctor was in his elegant dressing gown – had found and put on his spectacles, a pair of socks and his soft slippers.
‘I am flattered,’ he said, in his quick, stilted, yet very pleasant voice. ‘I am more than flattered – lead on, boy, lead on.’
They descended the dark stairs; on reaching the hall the Doctor vanished but reappeared almost at once with two pokers: one long, top-heavy brass affair with a murderous club-end and the other a short heavy iron thing with a perfect grip.
The Doctor hid them behind his back. ‘Which hand?’ he said. Titus chose the left and received the iron. Even with so crude a weapon in his grip the boy’s confidence rose at once. Not that his heart beat any the less rapidly or that he was any the less aware of danger, but the feeling of acute vulnerability had gone.
The Doctor asked no questions. He knew that this strange business would unfold its meaning as the minutes went by. Titus was in no state to give an explanation now. He had begun breathlessly to tell the Doctor of how Flay would leave a trail of chalk, but had ceased, for there was no time to act and to explain together. Before they opened the front door Dr Prunesquallor drew the blind of the hall window. The quadrangle though still extremely dark was no longer a featureless and inky mass. The buildings on the far side loomed, and a blot of ebony blackness that appeared to float in the gun-grey air showed where the thorn tree grew.
Titus was at the Doctor’s side and peered through the pane.
‘Can you see him, Doctor?’
‘Where ought he to be, my boy?’
‘Under the thorn.’
‘Hard to say … hard to say …’
‘Easy to tell from the other side, Doctor. Shall we go round by the cloisters …? If he’s gone there’s no time to lose, is there?’
‘I take it from you that there isn’t, Titus, though what in the name of guilt we are doing only the screech-owl knows. However, away!’
He stood upon his toes in the hall, and lifting his arms, stretched them before him. Between his outstretched fingertips the brass poker was poised as though it were a mace, or some symbolic rod. His dressing gown was corded tightly at his slender waist. His delicate features were set in an extraordinary expression of speculative determination both impressive and bizarre.
He unlatched the door and the two of them set off down the garden path. The Doctor in his slippers, Titus in his socks, with his shoes slung loosely around his neck, they moved rapidly and silently along the skirting cloisters until Titus, gripping the Doctor’s arm, brought his companion to a halt. There was the thorn, an inky etching against the rising sun, but the silhouette of Steerpike was missing. This was no surprise for Flay had also vanished. Without loss of time they sped across the quadrangle, and in the early light were able at once to see the dim sign of a chalk mark on the ground at their feet. Titus went down on his knees to it at once. That it was a rough arrow pointing to the north was apparent enough, but there were some words scrawled below which were not so easy to decipher, but at last Titus was able to disentangle the roughened phrase ‘
‘“Every twenty paces” I think it is,’ Titus whispered.
Together they counted their steps as they moved gingerly to the north, the pokers in their hands, their eyes peering into the darkness ahead of them for the first sign of Flay or of danger.
Sure enough, at roughly the twentieth pace another arrow pointed them their way and showed Titus’ interpretation of Flay’s crude lettering to have been correct. They went forward now with more confidence. It seemed certain that they must come first upon Mr Flay, and that so long as they made no sound they could do no harm by moving swiftly from one arrow to another.
